I love green – but I am ALMOST getting a little tired of seeing it (at least as a filament for 3D printing)!
So now we have been 3D printing for a couple of months (since the middle of February). We continue to experiment and learn – sometimes the hard way! Some of the lessons we learned since I last posted relate to when it is best to use glue as opposed to a raft and the importance of making sure there are no tangles in your filament.
Kids 3D Printing – A Great Hobby That Develops Minds & Many Skills!
I have been very impressed with my now 11 year old daughter Gracie and her enthusiastic plunge into 3D printing. She really is a true maker/builder @ heart! (The kid is CONSTANTLY making something!) It makes me very happy to see how she is growing and challenging herself! And I think that this was a good hobby for her to delve into – since it utilizes and develops spatial thinking (for designing models), requires computer skills to manipulate the object and some practical physical skills to print, clean & finalize the models. She is developing a lot of skills that will be very useful in many aspects of life!
The other day she and her siblings were blowing bubbles. The bubble wands were scarce (they break and get lost easily) so the kids were using grill spatula’s and spoons with holes in them to blow bubbles. Gracie went into the house and designed several bubble wands on TinkerCAD.com (after taking the shape requests from her siblings) and was ready to print them when I arrived back at the house from work!
Likewise, with multiple kids – there are times when I can only take one or two with me to do something – but not all 4 of them. So it becomes an issue of “fairly” deciding WHO will come with me or do something. Sure you can have them pick a number, or take the time to put names on pieces of paper and draw – but I had mentioned to Gracie that we should do die (singular of dice) and be able to just roll it to see comes with me or does whatever we need to do.
Well, Gracie took that to heart and designed a die with the first initial of each kid on each side of the die and the other two sides had “roll again” stars on them. Great job Gracie – I could really tell she took the time to center everything and make sure the letters were all recessed to the same depth!
Things We Have Been Printing & Lessons Learned
Bubble Wands
(See the pictures above)
Kudos to Gracie on these! This was all her on these! No real problems printings – we only used a brim – and that was sufficient. We did enable supports – only because of the arrow shaped bubble wand – since it tapers and doesn’t not actually touch the print bed. This is the only part that didn’t print as cleanly as we had hoped.
The “Who Goes” Die
(See the picture above)
Again – Kudos to Gracie – because this was also all her! Pretty simple shape – so no real troubles printing. We did not enable supports – and thought it was possible that we might need them for the insides of the recessed letters. However, it printed fine on all 6 sides without any supports! If you look closely – you can tell that the most recessed part of the star that was facing down towards the build plate is not as smooth as the other side – but we didn’t mind that at all – since it just gave that star a little distinguishing character!
Wii Switch Game Holder
OK – You are probably going to notice a patter here – but this was also all Gracie. This is just in draft mode – and we do plan on printing this out again in a larger form. Gracie designed this and this was just a small test print. I know we did use supports – and I believe a brim. That girl is creative! It is nice to see her making gifts for her siblings (this was for Dominick for his birthday!).
Trammel of Archimedes (3 Shuttles).
First thing we produced that we needed to assemble with screws. Yes we got the idea from a YouTube video about science toys. There are various versions with 2 – 5 shuttles. We chose to start with one that had only 3 shuttles. This was printed in a few different prints. We printed each of the shuttles separately (could have done all 3 at once), the knob separately, and then switched out the filament to print out the base and the arm as two separate prints. I really like this – as a more sophisticated “fidget” spinner.
I do think that if I were to print this model again I would edit it to make the shuttles a little longer – which would probably make for smoother operation. I would also increase the thickness of the base – since we do find that it bends and bows – which widens the trammels and causes the shuttles to “derail” a little. You can find the model we used here: 3 Shuttle Trammel of Archimedes
Impossible Dovetail Box
We saw this on a 3D printing video we watched and I really wanted to try it. The first one we printed (above) turned out pretty well – but we did have a couple of problems with it. (Model is available on Thingiverse here: Impossible Dovetail Box, but I would recommend the one further below with the rounded edges.)
The first problem with this print was with regards to the filament. Since we have been changing colors lately we are learning how vitally important it is to MAKE SURE THE FILAMENT IS NOT TANGLED!!! It is surprisingly easy for the spool to tangle – since the filament is ridged and remains coiled – albeit not tightly – around the spool. So it is very easy for the end of the filament to go under another loop when you are handling it – and then you have a tangle.
I didn’t realize when I first loaded the spool that the filament was tangled. Well into the print – I did manage to notice – so I tried to keep going down to the basement to keep freeing it up – but you really can’t untangle the filament without stopping the print, cutting the filament and re-feeding it into the extruder.
Lesson Learned: Take the extra time on the front-end when you are loading your filament to ENSURE that it is NOT TANGLED! OR – you will definitely invest 5 X the time in redoing things and wasting filament on a failed print!
The second problem we experienced was that the angles on this model were quite extreme – and therefore SHARP! I broke the edge of one when I was removing some of the supports and jabbed my thumb hard enough to actually draw blood.
So I thought about trying to modify the model and round the corners rather than have them as sharp edges. I decided to look and see what was out there before investing that time – and am glad I did. I found this other model with rounded corners. It was also classified as a puzzle box – so I just imported the model into TinkerCAD and removed the interior features I didn’t want. I also increased the thickness of the walls and bumped the infill density to 50%. It printed out pretty well – but I still have to clean it up a little bit.
For a few of weeks we have been using glue stick pretty consistently to improve build plate adhesion. But it is getting a little tedious – as it is messy!
But lately, I have been getting good build plate adhesion without using any glue for big and flat objects like this dovetail box. However, I have had too much of the support structures really adhering to the model itself – so I am going to try adjusting some settings like bed temperature. As you can see – I still have a lot of cleaning up to do on this print that we just finished this afternoon! This model is available on Thingiverse here: Impossible Dovetail Box Brain Teaser
Lesson Learned: There is not necessarily ONE best way to ensure build plate adhesion. We continue to tinker around to find when it is best to use glue as opposed to using a brim or raft on our models.
Minecraft Style Monuments??
My now 10 year old son Dominick is getting interested in the 3D printing as well. He designed a monument of sorts in 3DSlash.net. This is more of subtractive type of design program where you usually start with a block and “chip” pieces of it away to form a model. I was proud of him for designing this and found it to be strangely aesthetically pleasing! Maybe it was the symmetry of the design?
LadyBugs (of course)
We are working on designing one with more durable antenna. Gracie wanted to print out one with each color of filament that we have used to compare quality. They are all done with the identical slicing parameters and in draft mode.
Thoughts & Impressions on the Creality Ender 3 Pro
For slightly less than $200 I have to say that I am VERY impressed with the Creality Ender 3 Pro! I am amazed at the quality of the prints that such an inexpensive machine can produce! IF you are interested in what we looked for in a printer and how we made our decision on which one to purchase – you can read about that here: Best 3D Printer for a Beginner in 2020? The Winner is (Still) the Creality Ender 3 Pro!
However, I think that one of the aspects that we really like about the setup that we have is the OctoPi (Read more about how to build your own OctoPi here: Making an OctoPi (OctoPrint) from a Raspberry Pi – Remote Control your 3D Printer!) – the small raspberry Pi computer that we have dedicated to the 3D printer to help us remotely control it and monitor it. Since our printer is located in the basement it is really the only way that we interact with the printer. Honestly – I don’t even look at or use the display that came with the printer!
Sincerely,
